A few American angel investors also participated in the round, AskArvi founder CEO Sushant Reddy told VCCircle.

Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas and Co. advised Jang Capital on the acquisition of a minority stake in Haida Technologies by way of primary share subscription. The transaction closed on 21 August.

AskArvi, which aims to provide a more personalised experience to customers, has built an artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant to answer questions on various products and policy-related information, besides helping the user raise claims.

Though it is still at a beta stage, the company has already helped over 15,000 customers with products and claim-support information, he claimed. “We are planning to use the money to build our AI platform and acquire the first 1,000 customers for travel and health insurance.”

The startup aims to build a fully-automated platform, which can intelligently help customers in pre- and post-sale support across health, travel, motor and life insurance segments.

AskArvi was launched in January by Reddy, Alok Tiwari, Ashwin Narkhede and Mandar Zope. Reddy is a former CEO of Mumbai-based financial technology company Quantum Phinance; Tiwari had earlier co-founded two other startups, Aptivaa and Xplanr Analytics; Zope is a former CTO of Omnikart; and Narkhede had stints in Quantum Phinance and Omnikart.

On his plans about the next round of funding, Reddy said: “This was our first round of investment. Based on the projected cash burn rates, the capital gives us an 18-month runway.”

Reddy said that the Indian insurance industry has a huge outgo in terms of paying commissions to intermediaries, to the tune of about Rs 45,000 crore, or $7 billion. “If there ever was one industry where we could eliminate the dependence on agents, this has to be it.”

In May, Vernacular.ai, which offers a multilingual AI platform for businesses, had raised an undisclosed amount from KStart Capital, the seed programme run by venture capital firm Kalaari Capital.

In February, Botworx.ai, a conversational commerce platform, had raised $3 million in seed round led by California-based venture capital firm Costanoa Ventures with support from San Francisco-based angel investment firm S V Angel.